Tackling stimulating subjects like mass extinction and resource wars with nary a human character in sight, Grant Morrison and Barry Sonnenfeld’s Dominion: Dinosaurs vs. Aliens is a cerebral sci-fi experiment that’s far more ambitious than it sounds.

In other words, the cross-platform project — with comics, motion comics and a movie trilogy in the works — is the opposite of what its sensational title implies.

Sonnenfeld, whose kinetic cinematography for Coen brothers classics like Raising Arizona and Miller’s Crossing, executive production of cult TV standout The Tick and helming of oddball film franchises like The Addams Family and Men in Black have carved him a Hollywood niche matched in peculiarity by Tim Burton and only a few others, said Morrison’s done wonders working with the project’s giant reptiles.

“It is amazing how he has created specific characters, emotion and culture for the dinosaurs, without using dialog,” Sonnenfeld told Wired.

Rather than simply a Cretaceous showdown of spectacular conflict between two expendable entertainment standbys, Dinosaurs vs. Aliens serves as a philosophical treatise on manifest destiny, genocide and indigenous revolt. Instead of another popcorny blockbuster thrown onto Hollywood’s disposable entertainment pile, it’s a pointed critique of overreaching civilization at the edge of oblivion.

But that’s what you should expect from outliers like Sonnenfeld and Morrison, whose exemplary work on comics — from the obscure (Animal Man, Doom Patrol) to the established (Superman, Batman, Justice League, X-Men) — have redefined the form. The pair’s work in comics, film and television typically drags what pop culture considers “normal” through the looking glass and into the engrossing zone.

Sonnenfeld’s CGI-soaked movie — adapted for the screen by Morrison, who has been flirting with a Hollywood breakthrough for years — should touch down in a few years, barring an alien invasion or globally warmed enviropocalypse.

Wired nailed down both singular talents for an exclusive interview about the print and motion comics, as well as the promising film adaptation that Morrison calls a mashup of Jurassic Park and Apocalypse Now.

Wired: Grant, the comic so far reminds me of your deft touch on the moving We3. Translating creatures doesn’t seem easy for audiences who need recognizable humans instead of humanized aliens in every scene or on every page.

Grant Morrison: The dinosaurs don’t speak and what they do tells us who they are. Every dinosaur scene had to be constructed like a silent movie to ensure that “characters” of the various dinosaur heroes would come through clearly. So although the dinosaurs don’t talk, they’re fairly expressive physically and it was obvious that audiences would immediately root for the reptiles as the underdogs. We were trying to avoid the trap of “good” dinosaurs versus “evil” alien monsters, and we wanted to be able to shift the allegiance of the audience from one side to another as the story progressed. Which made it important to flesh out our aliens’ motivations and personalities, too.

“These aliens are conflicted, brave, frightened, hopeful and poised on the edge of extinction themselves.”

— Grant Morrison

Wired: “Relatability” has become something of a crutch in film and comics, but it nevertheless reigns. And you seemed to have pulled it off with these impressively complex aliens.

Morrison: As we know from watching animated movies like Wall-E, it’s possible to create relatable characters who look barely human at all. So we decided to provide contrast to the buglike appearance of our aliens by making them very human in the way they talk and interact with one another. They’re not just rapacious monsters from another world, as they might have been in a less ambitious movie. These aliens are conflicted, brave, frightened, hopeful and poised on the edge of extinction themselves. Establishing a new home on Earth is their last chance for survival.

Wired: Barry, you’ve got a gift for aliens and cult quirk. How does this film fit into your resume, and do you dig working more with creatures and oddballs than their more “normal” counterparts?

Barry Sonnenfeld: I view all the characters in the movies I direct as “normal,” whether that’s the Addams Family, the worm guys in Men in Black or The Tick. My direction to all of the actors, CG or human, is how that character behaves in that situation. I remember driving Will Smith crazy when he suggested that Frank, the talking alien pug dog in the Men in Black films, had to retire for a while because he had a drinking problem. I explained to Will that the alien race that Frank is a member of doesn’t drink, and his idea didn’t make sense. Will looked at me incredulously and said, “You’re saying that you have no problem with a talking dog, but it doesn’t make sense that he drinks?!” “Absolutely,” I said.

But Dominion: Dinosaurs vs. Aliens will be a very different film for me. It isn’t a comedy, but a much darker PG-13 film than anything I have directed.

Morrison: As Barry says, the comic book version of the story and movie screenplay are very different from one another. It seemed important to treat the comic as its own thing, rather than produce a storyboard in comic form. The comic is more of a science-fiction story, and the use of diary-type narration gives it a more intimate, slowed-down pace.

“The closer I come to realizing Barry’s initial idea, the more it feels like Jurassic Park meets Apocalypse Now.”

— Grant Morrison

Wired: Grant, much of the chatter on this project, online and off, comes packed with terminology like “insane” and “what?” and “how?” You’ve also remarked that no one has really seen anything like it. Can you tell us anything about what’s in store, and the challenges involved in taking what seems like a very unusual concept and running with it?

Morrison: As the screenplay has developed over the last year, it’s become a bigger and more epic story than the comic original. The lead character, Kit, is a soldier in the movie rather than a scientist as he appears in the comic. The movie is massive in every way, from the scale of the battles to the intensity of the character conflicts. If anything, the closer I come to realizing Barry’s initial idea, the more it feels like Jurassic Park meets Apocalypse Now.

Wired: Grant, any thoughts on the transmedia approach? Between the comics, the motion comics and the films and planned sequels, you’ve got lots of irons in the fire.

Morrison: The various transmedia approaches all derive from the same basic world we’ve created. But I think they should all offer a slightly different take on the material. In the way that no two tellings of, say, the basic Robin Hood story are exactly the same.

Wired: The art on the comic is magnificent. Any thoughts on Singh, Kang and Liquid’s artists?

Morrison: I’ve worked with Mukesh Singh before on 18 Days, and he’s one of the best artists I’ve had the pleasure of collaborating with. It seems a shame that his work has been largely overlooked by comics fans in the United States. The Indian artists that Liquid uses are all operating at an extremely high standard and deserve to be much better known.

“I view the dinosaurs as the native race, trying to protect Earth from an invading army.”

— Barry Sonnenfeld

Wired: Apocalypse, extinction and even ancient aliens are pretty topical these days, although the ancient aliens of Prometheus seemed problematic.

Sonnenfeld: I came up with the idea of Dominion: Dinosaurs vs. Aliens after reading a book by Hampton Sides called Blood and Thunder, about how the United States decimated Native Americans with the rise of Manifest Destiny and the peculiar role that Kit Carson played in that history. I view the dinosaurs as the native race, trying to protect Earth from an invading army. The dinosaurs lack technology, but they know their way around the planet, and how to use it. The movie isn’t filled with metaphors and it isn’t trying to drive home a message. But it does have a lot of surprises.

Morrison: Themes of apocalypse are very potent right now, as we live through a time of mass extinctions brought about by human intervention. Dinosaurs dominated the planet for 165 million years. Human civilizations has been around for 6,000 years and we’re already well on the way to rendering the planet uninhabitable for ourselves and other species. So it’s definitely worth using our entertainment media to talk about how that feels. Both dinosaurs and aliens can be seen as representatives of where we are as people right now.

“The aliens are on meds for many of the same reasons as people in the 21st century!”

— Grant Morrison

Wired: That explains why your aliens confess to being on meds, which is simply classic.

Morrison: The aliens are on meds for many of the same reasons as people in the 21st century!

Wired: You’ve hinted about taking this beyond the first film, but could you elaborate?

Morrison: With all the enthusiasm and creativity surrounding this project, it should come as no surprise that we’ve worked out a basic storyline for a trilogy of Dinosaurs vs. Aliens movies. We’ve created a massive backstory that involves everything from Babylonian mythology to Nazi flying saucers. So we’re definitely aiming for spectacle, while trying to say something useful about the world we live in.